And each time, Justin Trudeau’s actions have earned lavish attention from media outlets in Canada and around the world.

But after it was pointed out that the shot of Trudeau breezing past the prom-bound teens was snapped by his official photographer, some Canadians have been asking why the media continues to fall for what seems to be a constant stream of PR stunts.

In order to capture the moment that Trudeau jogged past the teens, the Maclean’s reporter Aaron Hutchins wrote this week, the staff photographer would have had to run ahead of a planned route, set up his equipment to carefully frame the desired shot and ensure he was ready to snap when Trudeau came by. “And what once appeared like a pleasant coincidence of timing for whomever gets to pose with the prime minister, it’s starting to feel even more like a staged exercise than it was before,” said Hutchins.

Still, the encounter between Trudeau and the students went viral, catapulted into social media by headlines splashed around the world. The media – both in Canada and around the world – was now complicit in boosting what Urback described as the “vanity project” being manufactured by Trudeau and his team.

Coverage hit a fever pitch last year after the Canadian leader offered his take on quantum computing. Days later, a Vancouver-based blogger suggested the moment might have been more staged than the media coverage had let on, with Trudeau telling reporters earlier that he hoped someone would ask him about how quantum computing works. A reporter later jokingly referred to this before launching into a more serious question; Trudeau seized on the opportunity.

Trudeau is a social media savant, the Toronto writer Jesse Brown wrote in the Guardian last year, and he has used this to position himself as a sunny antidote to the turbulent news spilling out from other parts of the world. “Trudeau is the political equivalent of a YouTube puppy video,” he wrote. “Each week, Trudeau feeds the news cycle a new sharable moment, and our Facebook feeds are overwhelmed with shots of the adorable young statesman cuddling pandas and hugging refugees and getting accidentally photographed in the wild with his top off, twice.”

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That the Trudeau team would do their best to foster a certain image or impression is not surprising, noted the CBC’s Urback this week. But, she added, “It doesn’t bode well for public trust in the media to be so easily fooled by government attempts at manipulation … It is our responsibility to decipher between PR and news, and a picture from the prime minister’s personal photographer is not a coincidence, and not news. We should know better.”